Fireflower
by Desert.Moon
Summary: He embodied what she hated the most, and she still couldn't stop loving him. SasuIno oneshot.


A/N: Hello! Today, April 30th, 2009, is my two-year FF birthday. In honor of it, my 20th fic. :D Hope you like it! ^^

---

_He often wondered why he'd been born into a family of fire-wielders in a village made of wood. Sparks made of chakra flickered over his fingertips and flames burst from his lips, and he reflected on the fragile skin that Konoha wore beneath its solid-wood façade. It thrived on the Will of Fire that raced through its veins, but like a drug, that fire could so easily take over and burn through Konoha's seams. _

_He decided he would leave long before that happened. The Uchihas were out of place in this wooden world. Fueled by a temper that raged as easily as a firestorm, he knew he could burn it down._

_But if he did, he would be taking someone else's world with him to hell._

_---_

"Hey, Ino-chan, look what _I _can do!" The Academy student with the fluffy brown hair drew out his _I _to emphasize his excitement; and pretty genin Yamanaka Ino grinned indulgently, maybe just a _little_ flirtatiously, encouraging the young boy to go on. Ostensibly, she busied herself arranging a gathering of primroses, but she kept glancing back over her shoulder, making sure he knew she was watching.

The student beamed like the sun on her flowers, and raised his hands, bowing elaborately—although the gesture was somewhat ruined by his gangly awkwardness and his youthful puppy-dog face. Little points of light began to twirl around his fingers, spinning faster and faster until they whirled in one continuous loop. Delighted, Ino paused in her work, then blushed prettily and turned back to the primroses.

Alright, so she was flirting more than a little—somewhere along the lines of _shameless, _if not quite across the boundary.

She blamed Sasuke.

Her heart, choked with vines that tightened when she saw him, was still bound to his dark eyes. A childhood crush, fueled by competition with rose-haired Sakura—maybe. But a fire fueled grows into a storm.

And this student, well, he was showing off for a pretty girl, and being that pretty girl, she could appreciate the compliment.

Re-fixing the smile to her face, Ino glanced over her shoulder, blue eyes ready to sparkle with admiration. The lights had blossomed into a handful of flames, and she pressed down on two things that rose within her:

Uchiha Sasuke's face, and fear.

She spun back to her flowers to hide her reaction, smothering the images in her mind's eye. Fire in the flower shop reeked of danger; if so much as a spark flew out of control, her livelihood—her _life—_and her family's would be destroyed.

Sasuke had that power, too. But she'd always seen him as being in control.

Oh, there was no trouble. This boy seemed to have things in hand.

Preparing a flowery compliment, Ino started to turn, words blossoming on her lips. Before she could even see again the boy's flaming chakra, she heard, very tentatively, "Ino-chan… what do I do now?"

Alarm clutching at her throat, Ino pivoted, pale blonde tail whipping around behind her, bangs spraying against her cheek. The student stood staring, light green eyes wide with fright, as his chakra bloomed into real fire across rows of flowers, starting with the lucerne and hopping to the white roses with deadly speed.

For a moment, she froze, a blossom in the winter months, but fear thawed her. Though she longed to race through the shop, saving the rarities and commonalities alike, the flickering hungry tongues spread too quickly, devouring the flesh of her precious plants.

Feeling smoke eating at her eyes, drawing tears from pain emotional and physical alike, Ino snatched at the Academy student's wrist and dragged him from her burning garden, thankful at least that the white roses hadn't been near the door.

Then she turned and watched her whole world shrivel and die.

---

_He started flames, he didn't put them out, but he felt the fire chakra swelling long before anyone else. As soon as his Sharingan had identified its source, he let someone know._

_Well, not immediately. Momentarily, he hesitated; Yamanaka Ino had consistently, in the past, proved to be one of his most annoying… hangers-on. But in the next instant, he leapt from his casual perch in an ancient maple tree and delivered his message to a jōnin with a mask of indifference over his churning heart._

_Uchiha Sasuke worked hard to maintain his emotionless demeanor, but inside, he grew afraid. If he was starting to think nonchalantly about letting a fellow shinobi die, then he was losing the last vestiges of the control he had worked so hard to build up._

---

The firefighters—a combination of water-jutsu-wielding shinobi and citizens—came in time to save the house, though the shop and all that it held had been reduced to ashes. Luckily, the genin and her student admirer had been the only ones inside it at the time, and the very rarest of the plants had been preserved.

"Go on home," Ino told the boy, whose named she didn't even know. "I won't tell them it was you."

He stared up at her with those wide, scared eyes. "Thank you, Ino-chan," he said squeakily, but firmly, and darted off.

She should make him face the consequences—shinobi always had to face the consequences—but she just couldn't muster the energy.

At that moment, without knowing that it was he who had rescued her home, Yamanaka Ino fell out of love with Uchiha Sasuke. Now she had seen what his power could do to all that she loved. She didn't want to be anywhere near it.

With the time she would normally spend in the flower shop now free, and thoughts of Sasuke forcefully kicked out of her head, Ino threw herself into training. All her extra time and energy, she expended in the practice fields, improving every bit of her that she could. She may not be as smart as Shikamaru, or as… physically expansive… as Choji, but she could be more accurate, faster, _better_.

_Sakura can have him,_ she thought, flinging kunai into the branches of a blooming apple tree, spearing a blossom directly in the center. _I don't want him._

And it helped that she never saw him. As long as she never caught a glimpse of his dark form, she could pretend not to care.

Until her every move echoing with _I don't want him_ convinced her that she still did.

Fire only fed fire.

Or maybe it was the flowers that fed the flames.

---

She'd found a single survivor, one white rose that had escaped the flames. Well, it wasn't so much that it had escaped as it had been dropped as someone carried an armful from the house to the shop; Ino discovered it lying forlorn, but miraculously untrampled.

"Amazing," she said, picking it up. "No one even sees white roses anymore. But they still didn't step on it." Then she tucked it in her hair and wished it could still represent her.

But no innocent flower had such a great desire to be lit aflame.

---

The following day, she trudged past the empty Uchiha compound on her way to the practice field, and almost as an afterthought, she dropped the rose on the front step and walked on by.

She didn't see anyone pick it up.

---

_She was getting stronger, and he liked that. He was getting attached and he didn't like that._

_It had been pure accident. One day out of many, they'd occupied the same practice field. One day out of many, they'd walked past the Uchiha compound at the same time._

_Difference was, he stopped, and she kept on walking, letting fall her ivory rose. Staying far enough behind that Ino never noticed, Sasuke retrieved it, noting carefully the dirt that stained its pure-white petals. Too careful to touch a thorn, he remained uninjured._

_And he wondered what it meant. _

_He knew that she would know—almost certainly, that had been the reason she had left it there—but he refused to ask her. In fact, he abandoned the rose back there on the ground and walked away, vowing not to even think of her. With a greater goal in mind, he couldn't afford to focus on a girl, on any girl. Not even his teammate; especially not an obnoxious _fangirl.

_Less obnoxious now._

_And she made it a challenge, even for him. Every once in a while (she never used the same field two days in a row, a valuable ninja habit), they still found themselves in the same place at the same time—though she never knew it._

_On those days, he found it difficult not to see her._

---

Ino had noticed the flame chakra not fifty meters from her after the third time it had happened. She declined to let it change her pattern of rotation throughout the practice fields—which she strived to turn into _no pattern at all_—but she'd become so in-tune to fire since the loss of her shop that she wasn't anything like a flower at all.

Or maybe she was. After all, flora certainly knew when the blaze raged toward it; the heat drained out of the air and the plants shriveled up and died.

Yamanaka Ino refused to shrivel up and die.

Perhaps that made her a new kind of flower.

The seventh time, she followed the chakra to its source and found Uchiha Sasuke regarding her coolly, apparently in the midst of his own training. Her heart beat like petals in a hurricane and she realized she was no longer a flower at all, but a blade, battered, tempered, and strengthened by the flames.

She produced a new white rose, fresh and alabaster, out of pure chakra. It glowed faintly, flushed white, before settling into an earthy form. When he just stared at it, Ino flashed a blindingly brilliant smile, the one that made her so popular; when she smiled, she shone like the rose.

"Earth jutsu, Sasuke-kun," she said impishly, and dropped it on the ground in front of him.

---

_He caught it before it hit the dirt, this time unable to avoid the jab of a thorn and the sharp sting of drawn blood. "What does it mean?" he demanded of her retreating back; she pivoted with a smile of pure delight._

_  
"You saw it," she said, words laced with a pleasure he couldn't understand. How could he miss it? Then she added cheerfully, though at a somewhat softer volume, "Innocence. Or purity, I guess, take your pick!"_

_And she skipped off, looking as if she'd been possessed by the sun. _

_Uchiha Sasuke clutched the thorny green stem in his hand, ignoring the trickles of carmine that coursed over his palm, and left before he became too attached to ever change his mind._

_That night, he fled the village before the fire inside his heart turned another paradise into hell._

---

When he left, she wasn't there. She didn't have the opportunity to watch him go; no one told her he had gone, or made to her any promises that she could hold on to.

Wrong. She made a promise to herself. She promised she would grow up, fall in love, and marry, all without ever failing to love Uchiha Sasuke.

And she promised to never give a white rose away, not to anyone else for the rest of her life.

Only Sasuke could see.


End file.
